


Discordia

by the_guy_they_call_atlas



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Description Heavy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Greek Mythology, Original Fiction, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, first original work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22397731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_guy_they_call_atlas/pseuds/the_guy_they_call_atlas
Summary: He can’t describe that look, on her face or in her eyes—and as she draws closer, he notices them for the first time. At first glance, they’d looked a dark brown, but now he realizes they are as black and soulless as a winter’s night, and just as chilling—and isn’t that something? He notices for the first time that it’s downright *freezing* outside, on a summer night in Louisiana.





	Discordia

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I know I haven't been around in forever--typical excuses of life getting in the way and the busyness of the New Year. I haven't had nearly as much time to work on my fanfictions as I've been wanting, but I have a small sliver of time coming up soon that will hopefully grant me a precious few days to complete some of my backdated works (With Friends Like These and a few oneshots). In the meantime, though, I decided that I'd like to try my hand at an original piece, and wrote this over the course of last night. This is my first ever original work, so please don't hesitate to provide feedback with what I could improve upon, and what you did or didn't like. All comments are greatly appreciated, even negative ones. I thank you, and I hope you enjoy it at least a little. :)

Virginia Sinclair is not a patient person.

She hates tardiness. She loathes incompetence. She detests unreliable people—yes-men who never keep their promises, people who can’t follow the simplest of orders, or otherwise mess them up. She _abhors_ unprofessionals, who think that just because they offer a word or two of flattery or a flimsy excuse they can get away with anything.

Virginia Sinclair is not a very pleasant person, either.

The smell of processed tobacco fills the musty night air as smoke from her cigarette floats and curls above her head, making delicate twists and turns as it rises higher and higher into the night air, eventually fading away into a ghostly mist. She sighs contentedly as she watches it with a bored sort of fascination; it gives her something to do while she sits, clacking her red heels impatiently against the headstone she is perched upon and providing the only noise in the otherwise quiet night as she waits for him to show. It’s now at least an hour past the designated meeting time, she muses as she checks her watch again. Twelve past midnight. Where is he? Had he gotten lost? Had he decided to back out of their arrangement without informing her? 

Humans. _Mortals._ She simply doesn’t understand them.

Virginia feels some kind of anxiety clawing at her insides, poisoning her mind with doubts. It’s strange, having negative emotions like this. She’s never had to get used to it, thankfully, but it’s still very uncomfortable. _Have they really found it, my missing piece? They wouldn’t know how much it means to me, to have it back. They couldn’t know how much I’ve sacrificed to find this damn thing, how long I've waited. How much I’ve_ **_wanted_ ** _this for so long._

How will it feel, she wonders? She’s still herself, still the same old—well, _she_ and everyone who matters knows. She’s still incredibly powerful and she’s still acknowledged, still worshipped in some places, and she can still comfortably get by without that missing piece. But ever since _The Incident_ occurred, she just hasn’t been herself, and she’s never gotten used to it. So, she’d set out to find it—relatively easy work for someone like her, and she had gotten a lead a while ago about where it might be and who might be able to help. Now, one of their “workers” is supposed to be meeting her here to deliver the goods, which had finally been found after rigorous searching and generous donations on her part, and he is either late or never showing up.

She hears footsteps behind her suddenly, and instead of being immediately on guard, she relaxes, her ruby lips twisting into something that isn’t quite a smile but isn’t entirely evil either. _Finally._ “Mr. Barton,” she greets in her practiced Southern drawl, typical for the bayous of Louisiana. She turns her head to look at him, noticing that he stiffness when her dark eyes settle on him. Good. It’s much more fun when they’re scared—but, she’s quick to remind herself, that’s not why she’s here tonight.

“Miss Sinclair, a pleasure,” he replies coolly, though his voice shakes ever so slightly. She’s pleased that he’d remembered her name—an alias, of course, but he doesn’t need to know that. She nods in acknowledgement, finally standing up and turning fully towards him. To business at last, then. She notes that he has what she’d asked for, tucked underneath one arm in a way that the slightest movement could make it drop. Virginia’s lips curl in the slightest frown, unnoticeable in the cloudy night.

“I was beginning to think you’d never show,” she says conversationally, going for a nonchalant tone but eyeing him shrewdly. She’d learned early on to never trust someone who was acting like they had something to hide. She studies the way he stands, how he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. _Nervous._ But why? She rolls her smoldering cigarette between her fingers, noting the way he stiffens when he—surprisingly—realizes she’s studying him. The lion, gazing upon the fields of gazelle and waiting to pounce. Predator versus prey.

“I know what I’m doing, lady,” he stammers out, though judging by the way his hands begin to shake, the accusation alone makes him uncomfortable. She says nothing; she does nothing. He knows what he’s done, even if she doesn’t...yet.

He waits for her to speak, impatiently, but when she offers no comment, he huffs in frustration. His hands don’t stop shaking, not exactly, but he clenches his fists, which does wonders to hide it. Mr. Samuel Barton smoothed his increasingly worried expression, opting instead for what he probably thought was a look of defiant nonchalance. Virginia can’t help but raise a penciled brow at the look. “Of course I’m sure. I’m here, ain’t I? I got your damn delivery.” He shakes the parcel in his hands roughly to emphasize his point, and Virginia, in a rare moment of self-restraint, manages not to strangle him.

It would appear that he’s just a lackey, then—he has no idea who she really is, or what the parcel contains. He looks the part, too—his shaggy brown hair is unkempt, his boots and lower half of his pants caked with mud and soot. His trenchcoat is a tarnished black, torn in some places and crudely stitched in others. Did they really think that she was so unimportant, that she wouldn’t notice this glaring insult? She takes a few seconds to smother her growing irritation and slips a hand inside her charcoal trenchcoat. “You do realize that if my merchandise is in any way, shape, or form damaged, you will pay for it. Dearly.”

Something in her tone makes him stop and look from the package to her. She can tell by the flicker in his eyes that he doesn’t believe her, not entirely, but she knows that the longer he looks, the more inconsistencies he will find. Surely he's noticed a few already—her dark hair, settling just above her hipbone, shifting in the wind on a still night, or her shadow—she doesn’t have one. Or does she? It shifts behind her, moving even when she isn’t, and even in the cloudy night it appears when it shouldn’t—moving, it seems, of its own accord. He studies her in a much sloppier manner than she did him—he misses all of it, all the subtle hints and glaring warnings. Ultimately, he doesn’t offer comment, and the fool actually _relaxes,_ thrusting the package towards her and reaching into his own pocket. He doesn’t pull it back out.

“I don’t even know what the hell is in here. I’m just here to deliver the goods...and the payment,” he adds on expectantly. He eyes her hand, still tucked away in her pocket. His is still curled around something in his own pocket, probably a weapon. She can see the outline of the gun in his coat, poorly concealed. Whether or not he intends to actually fire the weapon is something that is beyond her knowledge—if eons of mingling with mortals and meddling in their affairs has taught Virginia anything, it’s that humans are so delightfully _unpredictable._

“The parcel first, if you please.” Her slender fingers curl around the leather pouch in her pocket, looping themselves around the drawstring and pulling it out into the open. Her claws scrape against the leather of the pouch, and she wonders if he notices. She likes it when they notice. “As you can see, I have the money, and I’m more than willing to part with it.”

“How much?”

“Ten million, as promised.”

Barton hesitates. Something about him shifts, but the change is too sudden and too trivial for her to catch it. He looks down at the promised delivery in his hands, back to her, and tosses it unceremoniously in her direction. He holds out his hands, eagerly awaiting the money pouch, but it never comes—Virginia is too preoccupied with the parcel, turning it over in her hands and checking for damage. Seeing none, she flips it over, noting the twine ribbon on the front, and unties it with a single hand movement.

It’s a box.

Well, of course it’s a box. Her delivery is too delicate, far too important to be packaged and handled in simple paper. She returns to the headstone she had waited so long upon, balancing the box on her legs and serrating the tape with her claws…

“Miss Sinclair, the payment.”

She isn’t listening anymore. How can she, when she holds in her very lap the thing she has been seeking for the past millennia? One of the most powerful treasures, one of the most _priceless,_ to ever grace the face of this planet. 

Oh, she had forgotten how _beautiful_ the Hesperidian apples were. As she reaches into the box to grasp it, she shifts her leg, and the thing rolls over in the slightly-oversized box. The end of the word “fairest” can be read in the moonlight now, the apple titled to hide the rest of the words—but she already knows what they are. She doesn’t remember to whom it was truly addressed—the Trojan War had been centuries ago.

“Virginia”, at long, long last, holds the golden apple in her palms again, caressing it as gently as one would a picture of a beloved. She feels the power coursing through the fruit, the force of the memories that accompany the simple message carved into the side— _To The Fairest._ The golden ichor that runs through her body tingles underneath her gray skin, and she breathes the humid Louisiana air deeply. _At last. Oh, at long, long last. I am whole._

“Miss Sinclair,” Barton insists again, all pretenses of patience and pleasance long gone. His hand, she notes distantly, is no longer in his pocket. He’s holding something at his side, and oh, when did the clouds clear? She can see the moonlight reflecting off the metal surface of the gun. “Miss _Virginia_ Sinclair.”

She whispers something into her palms, not for his ears to hear—something ancient and powerful, speaking of things lost and dead to the modern world; whispering secrets of a time long past, of ancient rituals and gods, and temples built to honor them. She speaks of wars, reduced to nothing but myths, and the heroes honored in them—gone, reduced to nothing but cautionary tales. There is so much in that unheard whisper, not intended for mortal ears to hear—but _they_ hear. They listen.

——

Samuel Barton is having none of it. He clears his throat again, and again fails to get the attention of Sinclair, who is thoroughly engrossed in whatever the hell she’s holding in her hands; from here, it looks like a ball of solid gold. The moonlight catches it and reflects its luster back to him, and while he’s tempted to jump her for it, the ten thousand will do just fine. He considers just heading over there himself and grabbing the discarded pouch—she had dropped it in her haste to open the package. After another moment of her unintelligible whispering, he’s finally had enough, and pulls out his gun, intending to fire and take them both.

Then she looks up.

“Virginia—” he starts, intending to try again, but she stands up, still holding the golden ball, and he’s prompted into silence.

“That’s not my name,” she says suddenly, sharply, her gaze intense as it boards into him. Gone is the Southern drawl, the faux heaviness of her voice. Her voice now, her _true_ voice, is so beautiful, so _deadly_ —it is the waves crashing against each other in a storm, the din of metal against metal as heroes fight in pointless wars, lovers fighting, people dying, life being _lived_. It is chaos, and she revels in it.

Barton is about to protest, about to call her out on her obvious fabrication, but then the moonlight catches the angle of the tombstone behind her, and as he reads the name inscribed, he feels a cold chill settle in his bones, a fever he can’t shake. His heart races inside his chest, blood pounds in his ears, and as the woman stares at him, still holding that golden ball, he gets the oddest sensation that he will be joining those in this graveyard tonight in eternal slumber.

“Who are you?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

She doesn’t respond at first. She studies him carefully, as if she’s making up her mind about something. “Virginia”, or whoever—whatever—she really is, tosses the golden ball between her hands as she thinks, before slipping it into her front coat pocket and starting to walk towards him, grinning. Before she can take more than three steps, she sinks into the ground, quick as a blink, and reappears somewhere in his right peripheral vision. The _thing_ had melted into the shadow of her own tombstone as easily as he could breathe, and reappeared just as effortlessly, it seems. She climbs from the shadow of the moss-covered tree trunk and moves away from his direction, and while she still stares at him with those otherworldly eyes, he thinks he’s safe for a second. Just a second—until he sees her rising, _floating_ , it looks like—out of the shadow of another tombstone, somewhere on his left and far closer than he’d like her to be.

Barton wants to scream for help. He wants to run away. The cemetery gate is only about ten feet away, and this woman is in heels; he knows he can outrun her, but he can’t move. He can’t speak. Gone is his bravado, gone is his greed and lust for wealth—he just wants to go home, consequences be damned. Everyone be damned but him. But he can’t move. All he can do is watch her melt, and that’s really the only word for it; she melts into the shadows, her body taking an almost gaseous form as it liquefies and twists into something malicious, something _inhuman,_ poweremenating from every inch of her being, monster or not. There is purpose in the way she flexes her fingers in the brief moments she’s solid again and the way she eyes him. He can’t describe that look, on her face or in her eyes—and as she draws closer, he notices them for the first time . At first glance, they’d looked a dark brown, but now he realizes they are as black and soulless as a winter’s night, and just as chilling—and isn’t that something? He notices for the first time that it’s downright _freezing_ outside, on a summer night in Louisiana.

The thing seems to notice that he’s taken something about her into account. It grins, and holy God, her teeth—she hasn’t smiled fully the entire time they’ve been here, but now that he’s seen it, he wishes he’d never seen it. They’re too sharp, too _bright,_ to be normal human teeth, and now he _knows_ that it isn’t human. There’s an indescribable evil aura about the creature, as if it means to cause harm to anyone who crosses its path.

Well, they’re wrong—not harm, just _chaos._ She supposes there’s a fair amount of harm to be done with that, too, but sacrifices must always be made in everything, but _especially_ for chaos. Beautiful, sweet, infinite _chaos._ What a wonderful thing.

_Virginia_ finally reaches him, finally, finally, _finally,_ emerging from the darkness from his very own shadow. She taps him on the shoulder, and as he turns around terrified, she slips back into his shadow, so when he turns back around she’s staring him in the face.

She notes with pure glee the terrified look in his eyes. He’d noticed, then. Oh, she loves it when they notice. It makes it so much more _fun._ She brings a slender hand up to his cheek, brushing her fingers over it and to just underneath his jaw. She can sense his fear, his anger, his premonitions. She knows he knows what’s going to happen. He deserves this—she can see every little guilty sin that stains his soul like the bruises he’s left on his children. His wife. She can smell the alcohol on his breath even now. Normally, this isn’t her—she doesn’t kill people directly. They have people for that. But he’s pissed her off today, and hey, it’s not like she couldn’t use a pick-me-up.

“Who are you?” he asks again, with what sounds like every last bit of his strength.

“Eris,” she says again, and her grin widens as her claw comes to rest on the edge of his neck. “I am Eris, goddess of discord.”


End file.
